Google has quietly deprecated its famous “don’t be evil” motto in recent years, but I can think of another one that might fit better these days: “Don’t be boring.”
How Google chairman Eric Schmidt might possibly have reacted to the news.
Seemingly out of the blue on Monday, Google announced that it is forming a new company, called Alphabet. Alphabet won’t be part of Google. Rather, Google will become part of Alphabet. Are you confused yet?
Google CEO and co-founder Larry Page will step down (or up?) from the top post at Google proper and become CEO ofAlphabet. Fellow Google co-founder Sergey Brin will become Alphabet’s president. Longtime Google executive Sundar Pichai is now Google’s CEO.
So what is alphabet? Page is glad you asked. Here’s how he explained it in a blog post Monday:
What is Alphabet? Alphabet is mostly a collection of companies. The largest of which, of course, is Google. This newer Google is a bit slimmed down, with the companies that are pretty far afield of our main Internet products contained in Alphabet instead. What do we mean by far afield? Good examples are our health efforts: Life Sciences (that works on the glucose-sensing contact lens), and Calico (focused on longevity). Fundamentally, we believe this allows us more management scale, as we can run things independently that aren’t very related.
Alphabet Inc. will replace Google Inc. as the publicly traded company, Page added, and all shares of Google are now shares of Alphabet instead. Google becomes a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet.
Google will retain its core search and advertising businesses, as well as its maps division, YouTube, and Android, according to its SEC filing. Most of its other ventures will now be run separately under the Alphabet umbrella. Those include:
Calico, a project devoted to extending the human lifespan
Nest, the company’s smart-home division
Fiber, its ultra-high-speed Internet infrastructure project
Google X, the lab that incubates “moonshots” like solar-powered Internet balloons and self-driving cars
Google Ventures, Google Capital, and related investment arms
Read more athttp://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2015/08/10/google